Melaleuca

On November 1st we went back from daylight savings time to standard time…  I wrote a poem, or a few lines past half a poem, and I turned the page in my notebook without finishing.  I came across it today and decided to finish it, so I added that last four lines.

TIME

Daylight savings time stopped at midnight

and all the clocks have been changed in my house

to accommodate the shift back once again to Greenwich

but my body has no buttons to push to make the change in me.

Something in me resists this fooling around with time

which I have never understood anyway.

Is it anything of substance,

this something we have divided and measured?

What is a year anyway?

…and a day?

I confess, though, to being fascinated with timepieces:

sundials, wristwatches, grandfather clocks and chronometers.

I prefer poems and photographs to note the passing

of whatever it is we call time

Carolee and Ken Holmgren

Married 50 years ago on the very spot

where I took the picture today.

Mourning Doves

Two dozen mourning doves

flocked to my front yard

for God knows what reason 

yesterday and the day before.

There they were when I went out 

to pick up the morning paper.

But today they were gone,

which leaves me wondering

what the attraction could have been.

And why did they come in a flock

and not in pairs or three at a time

which is the way I’ve seen them

on a hot summer afternoon

scratching around in the street?

And they were absolutely silent

except for the fluttering of wings.

All the time I was growing up

I thought they were morning doves…

like when I heard Marian Anderson sing

My Lord What a Mourning.

I thought she was singing

My Lord What a Morning.

That I had it wrong for so long

has left an uneasiness I can’t explain.

Thailand's
Tigers

In less than 15 years this has all come about.  Amazing!!!    THAILAND'S TIGERS 2!                                                                        Share These       With All Your Friends

North Park Mural

The Davids, Margaret and I served

Thanksgiving Dinner at the Senior Center 

Downtown San Diego...

then back to the Davids' House

for a Wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner...

David made a delicious loaf... 

TOMORROW...

Happy Thanksgiving

MONDAY…  For at least a week I’ve intended to stop and take a picture of yellow leaves… to post them and to ask the name.  Surely there is someone out there who checks the blog and recognizes the leaves.  When the late afternoon light comes through the trees and hits these yellow beauties, they are special.  So I’ll be waiting for someone from a place where leaves turn in the fall to some color other than green to let me know what this is.  I’ll try to remember to take a picture of it when the new green leaves appear in springtime.  

We are two days away from Thanksgiving in San Diego.  The Liquid Amber Trees,  or Sweetgum as they are known in Arkansas, are at their best color right now.  I saw them on the way home from Church on Sunday.  I’ve got to get a picture of the Sweetgum again this year. 

Sunday Mysteries…

Everybody who knows me knows that I like the mystery the surrounds me wherever I go.  Today I was surrounded by the mystery of trees that seem to be communicating something… to whomever takes the time to stop and look and listen.  First, The knotted piece of a tree surrounding a hole challenges anybody who takes the time to study it.  No matter how closely I look at the piece of a living tree, the meaning is hidden in the dark recesses of the hole.  I’m trying to decide if a whorl is intended and goes out of control before it decides what it will be.

On a tree near the one with the mysterious arrangement in and around the hole there is a patch of bark that makes no sense at all, yet in the absence of meaning there is something mysterious, something that defies understanding.  It’s like something an abstract painter would do knowing exactly what every mysterious part of it means.  

Not far away from the two other living pieces of trees, there is something that looks for all the world like an eye… but, of course…

Chasing Light

The way light caught the upper branches
of a tree I know gave me reason to believe
light is alive and has a way of choosing
what it will and what it will not bless. 

Friday Finally…  On the way to a lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art this morning Margaret and I followed a path less traveled by than the usual way that leads through the middle of the park.  The bicycle racks are never at the backs of buildings, but some of the nicest flowers can be found there.  The backs of buildings are rarely photographed, so I asked Margaret to stand by a light post at the back/west corner The House of Botany.  Like light at sundown or what’s hidden in the dark shadows in the middle of a bright day,  the backs of buildings in a world-renowned park are mostly unrecognized.  Eucalyptus trees fascinate me, but are considered by most people to be junk plants.  There is a little known edge of almost everything.